


translucency

by autisticalistair



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Parent Death, Psychological Trauma, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-27
Updated: 2017-06-27
Packaged: 2018-11-19 17:20:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11318082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autisticalistair/pseuds/autisticalistair
Summary: how light carries on endlessly, even after death-saturn, sleeping at last





	translucency

_Noctis runs. It’s all he can do, really, running for his life and hoping, praying, that he will make it in time. His home is burning, his father inside, and he has to get to him. Has to save him. Regis can’t die, not now, not after everything. Noctis is still only a child, really, barely nineteen, but he knows that he has to pull his father from the fire, because that’s all he has. Regis is all he has left. There’s no one else, no one he can call family. It’s always been just the two of them under this roof, laughing and joking, a father telling stories to his son, a son trusting his father with everything._

_It’s too much. Noctis barely gets any warning before the windows explode and scatter the lawn with shattered glass. It falls on him like hail, slicing the skin of his arms when he puts them up to protect his eyes and face. He barely notices the pain. He just screams for his father, and tries to fight through the burning, blackened wood of the front door, but someone is pulling him back, and he has to fight, he has to push forward, he has to save him._

_Someone says his name, and Noctis doesn’t recognise the voice, but it calms him. The arms holding him back are strong and hard to fight through, but eventually, when the world goes silent and all he can do is fall to his knees and accept that his father is gone, all of the fight leaves him. It leaves him for good, because what can he do, knowing that his father is gone?_

_It feels like a lifetime before he’s taken away. His throat burns from the smoke, and he feels bone tired, heavy and useless, sat in the back of an ambulance while a paramedic is asking him questions in a gentle voice. She doesn’t make him feel like he’s a failure, just that he did what he could. When she drapes the shock blanket over his shoulders, she squeezes his arm in sympathy and tells him wordlessly that she’s sorry._

_Noctis barely remembers the next few days. Police reports, finger prints, checking his non-existent record because he looks like a delinquent and has friends who have criminal records, so we have to check, you see. Noctis wants to scream at them that he would never do something like that, but they won’t listen. Of course they won’t. They don’t believe that he would never try to hurt his father, that they were close. In the hotel room where they keep him, he cries until he feels empty, then just sits in the shower until the water turns cold, because that’s the only thing that can ease the feeling of fire licking his skin. He has burns on his arms – nothing serious, but still there. The cold water soothes them somewhat._

_The day of his father’s funeral, he barely drags himself out of bed to go. It’s quiet and sad, but the paramedic who had talked to him is there, for some reason, and Noctis finds out her name is Lunafreya. She accompanies him through the cemetery, where she shows him her own mother’s headstone, and he understands. He stays with her for a while after, a month or two, because she’s the only one who offers, the only one who has the means to support them both. He goes back to work, but barely performs how he’s meant to, and he comes home and just sleeps, unable to do anything else, because that’s all there is._

_After a while, Noctis moves out. Luna stays in touch, and she keeps him grounded with her infinite kindness and ability to make him get out of bed in the mornings. He learns from her how to force himself to continue on, even if it hurts, even if it tears him apart to think that he failed his father, because Regis is dead, and they couldn’t even have an open casket, the burns were so bad. Noctis had seen them, and wishes he never did, because his father was unrecognisable even as a human, skin blackened by fire, his eyes gone, his hair gone, nothing but a withered husk of a man who had raised his son on his own, reading bedtime stories with all the different voices, and teaching him how to cook, and helping him with homework._

_But Noctis survives. He has to. He has no other family, and he has to keep his father alive in him because he’s the only one left to do so. Three years pass, and it’s like they barely happen, with what he remembers of them. He closes himself off, stops speaking to people, and by the time he turns twenty-two, Luna is the only one left who he can bring himself to speak to, because they understand each other in a way no one else could. Noctis is happy to help her through the worst of the grief at losing her mother, some of which still lingers after all of these years, and Luna reminds him gently that he needs to eat, to get up, to have a shower, to_ live _._

_He knows that Regis would love her. They go on a few dates once upon a time, but it never goes beyond that, because that’s not what they are to each other. Noctis is okay with that, and he knows that Luna is too. They remain a tether for each other, and that’s all they need from each other, really. Late night phone calls and lazy days off spent in each others company, and a safe person to confide in._

_On his twenty-third birthday, Noctis finds an old photo of him and his father when he was a child, and he breaks._

_It’s like glass shattering from the heat all over again, his scars reopening, his burns blistering, his voice hoarse from screaming for Regis. He spends what could be minutes, or hours, staring at the photo in trembling hands. It’s always been just the two of them, and now, Noctis is alone, in his tiny apartment, not even trying to hold himself together as he breaks and sobs and cries out in agony, not caring if his neighbours hear him, because it’s been four years, and he needs to release this pain somehow before it destroys him._

_The morning after, he gets a tentative knock at his door, and when he braves opening it, he rubs his eyes and blinks a few times._

_“I heard you last night,” the man in front of him says carefully, quietly. “I wanted to check that you were alright.”_

_“I’m fine,” Noctis says far too quickly. He knows he isn’t, he doesn’t even look alright, with an old blanket over his shoulders and his eyes red and puffy from crying so much the night before._

_“Right. Well, I… I brought these. I always thought that food helps with pain, you know?” the stranger says, holding up a tupperware box. Noctis takes it gingerly, as if it might explode. He takes the lid off and sees homemade cookies, and for some reason, smiles. The man in front of him pushes his glasses up his nose and smiles too._

_“Thank you. I… uh… I’d invite you in, but the place is kind of trashed after last night,” Noctis admits somewhat sheepishly._

_“That’s fine. I’m at 28 if you want… anything,” the stranger says. His smile is kind enough, but he seems a little stiff and unused to doing anything like this. Noctis doesn’t blame him. He’s dressed smartly and his hair is neat and his hands are very clean, which Noctis notices and latches onto. No scars. No burns. No flaws, save for a few beauty marks on his face and hands, but even then, they’re not flaws._

_“Noctis,” he says, introducing himself. He holds his hand out and the stranger takes it. His palm is dry and warm, his fingers long and slender. Noctis holds on for slightly too long._

_The man introduces himself, and for a while, the world stops spinning._

_“Ignis.”_

**Author's Note:**

> this isnt gonna be a "oh i fell in love and everything is much better" story bc those are bullshit, i just wanna write hurt/comfort modern au ignoct with slow burn and baked goods  
> find me on tumblr @oakhenshield


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